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AVP International Gathering 2008 - Kakamega, Kenya

We have just completed a powerful AVP International gathering in Kakamega, Kenya with about 130 participants from 21 countries. Following the conference, many of us have been attending AVP and HROC (Healing and Rebuilding Our Community) workshops across Kenya, experiencing the pain of a country recovering from the terrible violence that swept much of the country after the recent elections.

Update from Western Kenya - April 15, 2008

AVP-Western Kenya plans on doing at least 200 AVP workshops (mostly with youth) in the next six months.This is a huge undertaking as it means an average of 33 AVP workshops per month--the most we had done in the past was during the AVP program with the gacaca judges in Rwanda when we did about 6 per month. Not counting this week, we have done 15. This present numerous challenges.

First we need to have a sufficient number of facilitators. We have increased the AVP staff at the Friends Peace Center--Lubao from one, Getry Agizah, the AVP coordinator, to five, by adding Peter Serete, Bernard Onjala, Eunice Okwemba, and Caleb Amunya. These are the lead facilitators who can go off with two other facilitators and conduct a quality workshop. We are already in the process of developing additional lead facilitators, but we also need more regular facilitators. In some cases we have "re-found" facilitators that we had trained before.

We are beginning to correct another one of our problems. Almost all Quakers in Kenya are of the Luhya ethnic group and of the above only Bernard Onjala is not a Luhya (he is a Luo)--AVP had already trained a group of Luo facilitators from the organization Onjala is affiliated with--ARO, sponsored by the Norwegeans. They have just turned in their enrollment forms for 360 youth for 18 AVP workshops in their area, called Bondo, and Kisumu, the city on Lake Victoria most hard hit by the violence. Next week they will start doing 4 workshops per week.

We have no Kikuyu facilitators in western Kenya. This week we are also conducting another Training for Facilitators (T4F). In this training we have invited three Kikuyu youth from our first training at the Turbo IDP camp together with three of the youth from the village AVP here in Lumakanda (one is also a Luo). All did the advanced last week and reports have that all of these youth were very "active" (the verb used here to indicate that they will be good facilitators). Of course not everyone works out, but this will be a start. As much as possible we have already started using multi-ethnic teams, but this is an area we need to drastically improve upon. The T4F will include five students from Friends Theological College who will be graduating in June which we hope to use with the increased demand among Kenyan Quakers for AVP workshops.

Then we have to monitor the quality of the workshops. With this large number of workshops and many new facilitators, we need to insure that the quality of the workshops does not go down.

We have made an arrangement with a group of four Austrialian semi-Quakers (the parents of Christine Dunn is a Quaker) who have built a small guest house in Shinyalu, about 10 miles from Kakamega, called Takatifu (holy) Gardens. It is affiliated with Central (Kenya) Yearly Meeting. We are holding two AVP workshops per week there. These can be residential. We therefore have a new plan, where we do the basic AVP workshops in the community and then bring 4 of the most "active" participants to a residential Advanced Workshop at Takatifu Gardens. In the rural areas most people are of the same ethnic group so basic workshops tend to be uni-ethnic. Bringing people from various areas will allow us to have multi-ethnic advanced workshops. A nice part of this arrangement is that AVP supplies the facilitators and materials, while Takatifu Gardens supplies the space, food, and when needed lodging.

I could go on and on, but you get the gist. Getry Agizah is an amazing organizer. Moreover in a culture where everyone wants to "negiotate" (ie, overcharge), she is adamantly frugal. We have developed a menu for the workshops, are in the process of exactly costing out the menu, have a limit (20,000/-) on expenses for a workshop, etc. We do not pay for space as the community, if they want the AVP workshop, must provide the space.

David Zarembka
African Great Lakes Initiative
Friends Peace Teams

African Great Lakes Initiative

Information about AVP and other related peace initiatives in the Great Lakes Region of Africa can be found on the www.aglifpt.org website.

David Zarembka, an American currently living in Lugari District in western Kenya and involved with some of this work, posts news and insights into current situation here.